Anyone out there have any experience with a new ultrabook other than a MacBook Air? My main use while traveling would be to save out preview jpgs from Canon Raw files in Lightroom to send clients, for event slideshows. Another use would be for tethered, live-view shooting with canon 5d II and III with the Canon software. Can you get reasonable color from the screens?

I did see the below "New travel computer - swings and roundabouts," which has good advice, thank you Steve Weldon and other posts. I looking to replace my Lenovo T60, which is still usable with Lightroom 3, but getting old. Would like to have something lighter. A much lighter ultrabook looks tempting. I'm not so worried about hard drive space. Managed to get by with 80gb with the T60, had to be careful on that.

HDMI 1.3 will drive up to 2560x1600 at 60Hz up to 30bit colour and HDMI 1.4 will drive up to 4096x2160 at 24Hz up to 30bit colour. Without checking the Sony would be at least HDMI 1.3 which has been out since mid 2006 and HDMI 1.4 has been around for 3 years (so it's likely the Sony support it, but again, it's worth checking the spec).

Either way, 2560x1440 at up to 30bit colour and 60Hz refresh should be no problem.

Good options, if you don't mind Windows. I prefer the Mac OS for the way it integrates all of my devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.) and for a superior user experience and reliability. Sorry for my Apple fanboy rave.

It's all good if you can get you work done and you enjoy the experience.

I've been looking at the Sony z, like the dual ssds in raid 0, but it only has hdmi and vga. Does anyone know if hdmi can drive a 27" Monitor at 2560x1440?

tia, Dave

Hi Dave,

the experience is great here in windoze7 x64, onn the Sony Z, i unfortunately bought mine just before they brought out the latest model, heck it could even be two models ago. my particular model has a Intel 3000 graphics internal, but it also has an ATI 68xx 1GB graphics in the external BlueRay drive. i do not have any monitors at the resolution you are asking about.

My only wish for mine, was thar the two SSD's were bigger, like 256 or 512GB each, but currently use a couple of USB3 disks, and that seems to work ok.

I do some pano work when I am away, and though not as fast as my Dual XEON, 96GB of ram with 12x SSD's and 8x HDD's its not doing a bad job.

I also have the extra battery for it, which does double the weight, probably don't need it, but got it just in case - i do live in a remote part of the world, Western Australia :-), but as it, the Z-series, is only a little more heavy then the iPad, and this one can actually compute

After the 4th time of having to reinstall my OS on my Dell laptop that I used as my main work computer, I talked to my friend how owns 4 Apple retail stores. In early 2007 he showed me Parallels v1.0 running Windows XP on a Mac which provided the solution for my work Window-only apps. left the store with a new Macbook Pro.

Within 3 months, I replaced every PC with a Mac and have not looked back since. My daughter's 2007 white Macbook has been through 4 OS upgrades without a hitch and she still uses it today. Her classmates with Windows laptops are on their 3rd and 4th laptop in the same time frame.

My 2007 MacPro 8-core that I use as my main photo workstation, has been through 4 system upgrades and it still works great. I've never had a PC last more than 2 years before upgrading.

I'm sold on how much lower the total cost of ownership is for Macs than PCs based on my personal experiences.

This is getting to sound awfully like an account of a religious conversion. I too was once a lost soul but now I have seen the light. Just to balance things up a bit, I have had PCs, Macs and Linux machines in my home over more than 30 years and the experience has left me resolutely platform-agnostic, having seen plenty of Spinning Beach Balls as well as Blue Screens of Death and not infrequently had cause for gratitude that I had forked out the heroic price of Apple extended warranties. I am running all three platforms at the moment and all three are working just fine. YMMV.

Getting back to the original post, the Sony S series is worth a look too - much the same price range as Ultrabooks while being potentially more powerful, more upgradeable and only a little bit heavier. It is also a lot cheaper than the Z.

How about a Macbook Air running Windows 7 via Bootcamp? That would be a viable alternative too, as the MBA 2012 models are powerful, have integrated Intel 4000 graphics and you can get them with 8gb ram.Cheers.

For my money I like the Lenovos, but would say two things. It is probably worth holding off until Win8 drops this Fall as I expect a whole new slew of Ultrabooks to hit with that OS in mind. Secondly, definitely get the super-extended-on-site warranty if you travel a lot. That is something that I value with Lenovo (and Dell) is worldwide on-site service if something bad happens. This is becoming less of an issue as computers become less expensive, backup & recovery becomes easier, but is definitely a great feature that only a handful of companies have the scope to offer.